Samsung hasn't paid any money yet, the final details of the case aren't 100% settled yet. This isn't the only patent involved in the case Apple has lost since the judgment, either. Most likely, damages will be reduced. By how much is yet undetermined (my guess would be "considerably", but then I would also have guessed Apple wouldn't have won in the first place).

Apple is appealing this. From USA Today: SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple today filed notice of appeal in its battle with Samsung, in which a judge this week denied its injunction request.
The highly anticipated move comes after U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh late Monday rejected Apple's request, stating the company has not been able to show that Samsung's actions support a ban of its products.
Apple is taking the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit along with "all other orders, rulings, findings, and conclusions underlying and related to that order," according to the court filing.
Judge Koh stated Monday, "Apple's evidence does not establish that any of Apple's three design patents covers a particular feature that actually drives consumer demand."
The judge's ruling came after a San Jose jury in August found Samsung violated six of Apple's patents and awarded a whopping $1 billion in damages. Jurors had sided with Apple in deciding that Samsung had violated key designs covering iPads and iPhones. Apple shares closed 0.87% lower at $521.73.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/20/apple-samsung-iphone-ipad-patents/1783017/ [usatoday.com]

Samsung has paid a ton of money directly and through damage to reputation defending themselves.

Effective anti-patent troll reform would make patent holder, if loser, pay some factor say 10 x (costs to defend + what they were asking as damages to the party they were suing + lost sales + etc.).

Of course, Apple has lost much of the tech segment as customers due to their trolling, but that is a tiny bit of their income. Getting spanked for $10-50 Billion once or twice would make them re-think their troll strategy-- if it didn't change minds of board members / C execs, the shareholders would revolt to the same effect.

"Of course, Apple has lost much of the tech segment as customers due to their trolling, but that is a tiny bit of their income."

I wouldn't be so sure of that. I can think of 9 mac laptops that people I know have purchased based on my suggestion. And this is with approximately 30 seconds of thought. The number is surely higher than that.

As for why I've liked them -- I can easily run much of the X11 based software I use directly on them, or can do X forwarding over SSH in a totally straightforward manner f

Just because a person criticizes Obama doesn't make them part of the GOP. Although it is shockingly rare, liberals do criticize Obama for being a neo-con right wing bastard. I'm a liberal through and through which is why I criticized GWB for being an evil fuckwad, and is exactly why I criticize Obama for being an evil fuckwad -- the "Adam Lanza in Chief" if you will -- what else would you call a person who spends every Tuesday deciding which random innocent people should die by drone attack. Indeed, exac

I think that would be reasonable. If you get a patent invalidated you should be forced to repay all money you have gained from it, or even double that money or something. Maybe that would stop companies from filing piss-patents.

This is actually an interesting thought, though I wouldn't go so far as to attach punitive damages to invalided patent, I see nothing wrong with charging a minimal interest rate on the monies paid as royalty fees on the patent.

I think both could be accommodated in law, however I'm not sure that you need the wilful version. If a company is demanding money for a patent that they knew at time of filing (or subsequently) had prior art that made it invalid, then they have committed fraud. No need for new laws, just prosecute them for this. If it's invalidated on the grounds of being obvious, then that's a bit more tricky, because this is quite a subjective judgement and it's hard to prove malice.

Minimal interest is what banks pay for simply allowing you to hold onto "your" money for you and use it for their interests.

It would be more than 'minimal interest', because it would be money used, under coercion, against their will, AGAINST their interests (sort of like taxes in many regards, really). So the interest rates on Payday loans seem more in keeping with the nature of the 'loan'.

Yea a lot of people were showing their disgust with this case after the results from the jury was read. Even from apple fans as well that are not happy with how apple is going about things, they decided to try to stop competition by litigation instead of being innovative. When case was decided by the jury, sales of samsung GS3 spiked after the trial.

Many Apple fans rejoiced. There was a lot of "in your face" and "got what they deserved" in response to the rulings followed by desperate attempts to justify a dishonest juror and the major crap he pulled. He "sent a message" alright. Problem is, just like other 'bad guys' he was stupid enough to brag about it. Had he said "it was a tough decision, but I felt the evidence was in Apple's favor and the other jurors agreed" things might be a little different right now.

But let's say the judge in this case was shown to have a LOT of Apple stock. Her failure to recuse herself would result in another trial even after the verdict was presented. But this was a juror. Jurors need special treatment in nearly every case simply because it's hard enough to select and agree upon the constitutionally guaranteed jury for matters such as these. If they were not almost completely immune to charges of misconduct, people would be even LESS willing to be on the jury. So you have to understand that the system will tread lightly on matters such as these. But have a look at this if you want to know more about jury misconduct:

Interestingly, dishonesty in voir dire is at the top of the list and yet somehow, the judge in this case is willing to ignore that.

And you make a good point. After the trial, there was a spike in GS3 sales. Where I work, a LOT of iPhone users have managed to switch over to GS3 or other Androids... one of my co-workers, much to my disgust, even bought multiple Nexus 4s so he could make disgusting profits. People like him are the reason why many of us couldn't get one the first time around. "Thanks asshole" but I wasn't stupid enough to buy one from these pirates.

My point is that android is really taking over and Apple iThing fans are changing hearts. I see it everywhere. I know... I'm not a good sample observer. But it would be interesting to see what the current usage trends are. Anyone know where to look for data on the subject?

"The industry" was working together just fine; there weren't actually that many lawsuits between companies like Palm, Nokia, and Microsoft.
Apple, however, came in as a newbie, took everybody else's ideas, put them in a nice shiny box, and started patenting and suing everybody.

>"The industry" was working together just fine; there weren't actually that many lawsuits between companies like Palm, Nokia, and Microsoft. Apple, however, came in as a newbie, took everybody else's ideas, put them in a nice shiny box, and started patenting and suing everybody.

Hell, Apple are not even unique in that respect.

When Marconi got a patent on wireless telegraphy in England, the rule was that you MUST NOT reveal the workings of the patented device before the patent was granted. Marconi presente

I also had a smartphone back in 2002 or 2003 that had a full color usable touchscreen, no physical keypad, and it actually worked damn well. Samsung I300, replaced it with a Samsung I500 Palm-based flip phone later. Lots of folks I know had Windows CE-based phones (Windows Mobile) as well.

You know what? They were sturdy. And worked quite well. And I found the physical keypad on the Samsung I500 a lot less frustrating than touch

Um, yeah, my Blackberry was dead nuts reliable when co-workers with these new-fangle iphone thingies were making calls that sounded like "Hello? Damn. (dial) Hello? Damn. (dial) Hello? DAMN." Before that, my Palm Treo (not the horrible Windows version but the one running PalmOS) did everything I needed, was absolutely reliable and took 30 seconds to bring to a full charge -- take the battery out, replace it with the one in the charger, put the exhausted battery in the charger, good to go. With an ip

I don't know if you actually remember the first iPhone, but it was similarly horrid. Not only was the build quality very low, but it had no networking capabilities to speak of, and everything had to be sideloaded. It was a full two or more product iterations behind the Windows CE phones (and handsets) of the day with not even a fraction of the applications - basically, it fed off the success of the iPod, "an iPod with phone features".

How quickly we forget how things really were... it wasn't until Android ca

The iPhone UI made a lot of mistakes too, they were just different mistakes. The main differences were that it had a capacitive touchscreen (they'd only just become cheap enough to put in smartphones) and a sufficiently powerful CPU and GPU to do interesting things with it. Other phones released at the same time were of similar quality (typically, better in some regards, worse in others). The older mobile phone companies like Nokia had problems because they had large software stacks designed for use in a

Um... I'm no fan of all the lawsuits, patents, etc, but honestly, does anybody actually remember what cell phones were like before the iPhone came out?

I wish I had my old Motorola Razr from what, 2003? I miss having a phone small enough to fit in my pocket and still leave room for my wallet as well. The size of an iPhone or Droid is the deal killer for me.

I never had the Treo and cell capabilities, but the just about every serious business use for a handheld device was contained in the Palm devices, as well as casual gaming. 10 years ago I was killing time while waiting around on appointments I was early to thanks to my calander app by playing Bejeweled on my color Handspring device. If I'd had a cell phone at that time, there was plug-in cell phone module for that but I didn't, so I didn't see the use then. The devices since then have basically been an e

Lawyers go wherever the money is. The sort of fly-by-night conmen who used to rip people off with bogus real estate deals can now rip millions off companies quite legally by buying a bullshit patent and threatening anyone and everyone. Lawyers love this shit, and that's why these two have set off hand-in-hand to rob and pillage the tech industry.

Apple might design nice looking products, but ethically they are pretty bad. If there was a company like this around when Apple were starting up they would have be

Why should company A work with company B to share innovations? If company A has an innovation, that would give it an advantage of its competition so they shouldn't share it unless they get something equally good in return. Sharing innovation is stupid and demotivates those to innovate.

Because they're not innovations, in most cases.Being the first to come up with a problem, too often these days leads to a patent.Take multitouch gesture patents.These are essentially all non-innovative.You start out with one perhaps innovative invention - the touchscreen over a computer display.Many subsequent developments were not really innovations, but outgrowths of what is made technically possible by the engineering.Once you have the concept of a computer display with a touchscreen on top of it, the in

I can hate both. Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should. And I don't care about the excuse that companies are soulless entities whose only purpose is to devour economic resources (i.e. make money) while retaining all of the rights of a human being.

No. The system has always been equally broken before, but it's a select few companies (Apple, Microsoft, Oracle) which have found it more profitable to compete in the market place. You don't see Samsung or HTC or Google trying to crush competition with lawsuits in the way that the above-named companies do.

Just because the law says it's okay to be a jerk doesn't mean it's okay when you actually do it.

Who have finally taken full advantage of all the abuse the system provides for. We need to recognize that the system is inherently broken and needs to be abolished and/or replaced. And only replaced if there's some way to show that the replacement won't have detrimental unintended consequences.

Just because the law says it's okay to be a jerk doesn't mean it's okay when you actually do it.

And there are many ways to be a jerk, even on societal levels. Interesting chart here [theatlantic.com] that completely invalidates the idea that copyright promotes the arts. Same with patents for the useful sciences.

If the Internet has taught us one thing, it's that very few ideas are actually unique. The patent system has just become a race to see who has the most and fastest lawyers who can file a patent for as many ideas as can be floated, ability or intent to implement be damned. Execution is what really matters now when it comes to advancing technology and nobody needs to make up imaginary property rights for a good management team to succeed.

But IP does maximize profits for certain corporations, created by the government, feeding money (and by extension power) back to the same government players. That's what we call a positive feedback loop. If there's a silver lining, positive feedback loops cause instability and usually lead to collapse, ending the cycle. Unfortunately, those collapses often damage everything around them when they let go.

I'm sure you meant that in a way contrary to what you have written right? Apple, Microsoft and Oracle do not compete on thier merits. Apple "might" at the beginning of things because when they come up with something new, they get a lot of attention... or they did. Jobs is dead and I doubt they will have that magic any longer. But Microsoft? Oracle? No.... no way.

The system has always been equally broken before, but it's a select few companies (Apple, Microsoft, Oracle) which have found it more profitable to compete in the market place. You don't see Samsung or HTC or Google trying to crush competition with lawsuits in the way that the above-named companies do.

No, most big companies maintained patent pools to make it easy to kill off newcomers. Big tech companies don't worry much about other big tech companies that they're used to competing with. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola, for example, didn't worry much about each other. They were all producing similar classes of products, and each generation their market share would slide up and down a bit, but it stayed relatively constant. They worry about newcomers that disrupt the market. The same thing happened in the workstation market. SGI was doing very well selling 3D workstations. Their big competitors were companies like IBM and Sun, but they knew how to differentiate themselves in the market from these guys and ensure that they had enough income to keep going. Then came nVidia, and suddenly 3D workstations were built from commodity parts: their market no longer existed.

This is why you don't see too many big patent lawsuits. The big players all have cross-licensing agreements within established markets and just use their combined might to squeeze out smaller players. If you want to join in, then they'll license you their patents, for either a share of the company or a share of the profits. If you do well, then they'll get a load of money, and if it looks like you'll do really well then they'll just buy you. The thing that gives management at these companies nightmares is the idea that they won't notice a company with a disruptive technology until it's grown so big that it can't be intimidated by these tactics.

It's nearly 11am, tomorrow, in eastern Australia. No sign of the apocalypse yet.:)

If you're looking for a temporally bound EOL canary, you'll fine none better than Nukualofa, which is UTC+13 -- That's right, an hour ahead of anywhere else. For instance, if you're in a -12 UTC zone, then they're not one, but two days ahead of you for an hour each day.

The USPTO has said the "bounce" patent ('381) should never have been granted, and the judge involved has said the tap-to-zoom ('163) looks like it might be invalid. That together with this would mean Samsung only violated the 3 design patents (the, uh, "rounded corners and color" and "rounded edges on icons" design patents, I'll leave the validity of a patent on those up to the reader).

If you were to recall when jury did interviews after the trial they admitted they punished Samsung for the use of the patents, which they were not supposed to do per the jury instructions. So what the damaged should been if all 6 patents were valid is up for debate at this point. 3 that are preliminary invalid made up a major majority of the judgement so.

So here's a question. Does Samsung get any of its money back? I mean the money it spent and is spending to invalidate this stupid patent? The money it spent on trial over this stupid patent? The money it spent finding the prior art that Apple should have found before filing for this stupid patent? No. Nothing in US patent system is that fair.

I'm not a lawyer, but maybe there's one out there that could answer: couldn't Samsung counter-sue, or the Judge rule in favor of Samsung and order court fees paid? And presumably, wouldn't all expenditures, including any involved with the research and gathering of information in regards to prior art, be covered?

The difference between "preliminarily rejected" and "actually invalidated" is analogous to the difference between "being arrested" and "being convicted". Apple has to defend the patent and lose before anything changes.

Do they have a patent giving a zoomed view when positioning a cursor? I'm asking because Android not doing it is annoying, and it seems like something that would be quite OBVIOUS to someone versed in the craft, I mean, I had could have a zoomed view when entering text in Deluxe Paint on the Amiga IIRC.

So that complete head-up-her-ass judge who refuses to throw out the case based on that jury foreman basically shut down their entire appeal...and then tada, the patent is thrown out. She's gonna be mad. She's obviously operating on her own agenda based solely on posterity and media opinion so she's going to have kind of attack when she finds out another judge undermined her. Whatever, the case is going to fall apart no matter what she does. Hopefully she resigns because her conduct as a judge has been c

The biggest problem with the patent system is that most people aren't aware of the problems with it. General public awareness of the problems in the patent system is a good step towards eventual patent reform. It takes a big case like this with lots of news coverage about products many of us use to motivate the general public. Change is never fast or easy but as long as the majority of people think that patent reform is needed, it should eventually happen.

As near as I can find, it doesn't look like Samsung raised any of these references during the trial to show the patents were invalid. Why not?

Additionally, Groklaw says:

The goofball jury, of course, thought it was a simply wonderful patent infringed every which way by Samsung...
Here's the verdict [PDF] form the jury signed off on after a nonchalant few hours of deliberations, which apparently did not include spending effort on whether or not this was a valid patent.
The most important part of this news isn't that the jury's work was a farce.

Wasn't Groklaw complaining just a few days ago that the jury foreman brought in external evidence, and therefore committed misconduct? And now, Groklaw is saying the jury should have conducted its own prior art search and brought in external evidence that wasn't raised by Samsung? What is it, the rules don't apply if it hurts Apple?

As near as I can find, it doesn't look like Samsung raised any of these references during the trial to show the patents were invalid. Why not?

A good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence wrt phones (the violations they were fined $1b for - they were cleared of copying the iPad) was disallowed because they missed a filing deadline. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of having the trial IMHO, but Judge Koh decided her schedule was more important.

Wasn't Groklaw complaining just a few days ago that the jury foreman brought in external evidence, and therefore committed misconduct? And now, Groklaw is saying the jury should have conducted its own prior art search and brought in external evidence that wasn't raised by Samsung? What is it, the rules don't apply if it hurts Apple?

Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.

As near as I can find, it doesn't look like Samsung raised any of these references during the trial to show the patents were invalid. Why not?

A good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence wrt phones (the violations they were fined $1b for - they were cleared of copying the iPad) was disallowed because they missed a filing deadline. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of having the trial IMHO, but Judge Koh decided her schedule was more important.

1) Not any of the ones mentioned in the reexamination. The "good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence" were several prototype phones owned by Samsung. The reexamination involves several prior art publications and patents, not prototype phones. So, again, why weren't these publications and patents brought up in trial?

2) The disallowed evidence was because no party in a litigation is allowed to keep evidence secret to spring on the other side on the eve of trial... and particularly where that evidence is th

Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.

That never actually happened, though. You're reading a few statements of Hogan out of context and putting them together to create a scenario that never occurred. It also doesn't explain why the patents and publications in the reexamination weren't before the jury.

Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.

That never actually happened, though. You're reading a few statements of Hogan out of context and putting them together to create a scenario that never occurred. It also doesn't explain why the patents and publications in the reexamination weren't before the jury.

"The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there."

(note he actually starts this sentence at 3:13, but I included the 26 seconds before it for context)

Well, for example, he never says "they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it" as the GP said. The GP is actually taking two different statements by Hogan - one about skipping over some prior art to return to it later, and the one you quote about running code on different systems - and combining them out of context. See?

The judge prevented Samsung from entering all manner of evidence for the purpose of demonstrating prior art. The whole damn proceeding seemed pretty heavily biased against Samsung. The b*tchy demeanor of the judge towards both parties seemed to me to be more of a cover for the bias than anything.

When a foreman tells the rest of the jury pool that he has patents and knows how they work and should therefore listen to him, even though it goes against the instructions, that is misconduct. Just saying. Several jurors, including the foreman himself have claimed this.

When a foreman tells the rest of the jury pool that he has patents and knows how they work and should therefore listen to him, even though it goes against the instructions, that is misconduct. Just saying. Several jurors, including the foreman himself have claimed this.

A “juror’s personal knowledge constitutes extraneous prejudicial information where the juror has personal knowledge regarding the parties or issues involved in the litigation.” Hard v. Burlington N. R.R. (Hard I), 812 F.2d 482, 486 (9th Cir. 1987). Jurors are expected to bring their own personal experiences with them into the courtroom, and may generally rely on their personal knowledge or past experiences when hearing the evidence, deliberating, and deciding their verdict so long as they do not have knowledge related to the specific case they are deciding. Id.

Hogan's personal knowledge of the patent system is not extraneous prejudicial information, because it is not personal knowledge regarding the parties or issues involved in the litigation - i.e. Samsung, Apple, or the patents at issue. He's entitled to rely on his personal knowledge of other experiences, provided they are not related to this specific case.

Continuing:

However, “[a]fter a verdict is returned a juror will not be heard to impeach the verdict when his testimony concerns his misunderstanding of the court’s instructions,” even where a juror would be able to “testify, objectively, of incidents tending to indicate that other jurors may have misunderstood the court’s instructions on the elements of the offense,” as “the inquiry would still concern the mental processes by which the jurors reached their decision and would therefore be barred by the nonimpeachment rule.” United States v. Stacey, 475 F.2d 1119, 1121 (9th Cir. 1973). Thus, a juror’s understanding of the Court’s instructions is not considered extraneous prejudicial information, and the Court cannot receive testimony on how the jurors understood or followed instructions. To do so would be to undermine the “crucial assumption” necessary for the functioning of our jury system. Parker, 442 U.S. at 73.

I find FOSS Patents to be filled with amateur web sleuths who have nothing better to do with their time than to shake their angry fists at successful corporations. A better source of information on patent law is Groklaw.

I really wish I could mod this down as it is an attack from a corporate sycophant. We are talking about so-called "successful" corporations using a mechanism to keep other corporations and individuals from being successful. That's the real problem here.

And, again, I think the FOSS community needs to form a foundation to get bad patents invalidated so we can have a decent system again.

Just ban all patents. What proof do we have that they are beneficial? None. We have ZERO evidence, no relevant control group w/o patents to examine -- Oh, wait, except for in certain markets, like Fashion and Automobiles; Neither are allowed design patents yet they excel in innovative designs. OK, so we have two half-assed control groups where patents aren't allowed, and yet they're more than innovative despite not having patent protections... For everything else? We have no proof whatsoever that pat

Patents are almost always filled in 'batches' of varying specificity. Patents fall to prior art (being too general) or detail changing (being too specific). You protect yourself by filing several. Your lawyer, had he not been imaginary, would have advised you on these details.

Say what? You mean waving fists at sucessful companies like IBM, Novell, and Redhat, wait they dont do that. I cant even remember the last time FOSS Patents has been correct on anything, groklaw on the other hand.

Wait, what? Apple stole every idea they had, then got mad someone stole their combination of stolen ideas. Jobs has come out talking about how he LOVES to steal other's ideas. In fact some of the ideas samsung "stole" they came up with first.

Patents don't stifle innovation........ they protect innovation. If there were no patents, then companies would not invest huge amounts of money inventing and innovating.

I'm a scientist, so: PROVE IT

Oh, that's right you have no evidence to support your untested theory, because we have ZERO evidence that patents are beneficial at all. Ah, so the only logical thing to do would be to collect some evidence, eh? THEN we could settle this argument once and for all. I'm sure you'd agree, I mean, You're not one of those fools who shies away from The Scientific Method, are you? Well then, you can only agree that we must first abolish patents to see if they are beneficial at a